Alfie Evans and British liberty
Alfie Evans died last night. RIP, and condolences to his mourning and suffering family.
Evans’ death has spotlighted some legal and philosophical issues about the Brits that I first noticed years ago when I was researching the laws of defamation in England. The common thread is the British attitude towards liberty. This may seem like a digression, but believe me it’s not:
Given how closely the U.S. and Britain align on many topics, the degree to which they differ on the issue of free speech is striking…
In American courts, the burden of proof rests with the person who brings a claim of libel. In British courts, the author or journalist has the burden of proof, and typically loses.
Britain is not an outlier, either. In fact, it’s the US that is the outlier in its more stalwart defense of liberty (the same is true of the laws of hate speech). And the Alfie Evans case—with its enormous and complex medical and philosophical and religious overlay—is also an example of liberty denied by the state.
So I agree with this:
…I cannot help but look on with sadness and occasional revulsion as the British State increasingly seems to regard and treat its citizens as subjects.
The people of the UK are still able to elect their leaders and impose dramatic changes, of course, so it would be a gross overstatement to liken their government (as some critics have) to a totalitarian regime. But a string of recent stories and incidents have raised serious fears in my mind about whether Great Britain is becoming something other than ”” something less than ”” a truly free country…
…Free people have a general sense of what freedom looks like, and that isn’t it.
And this:
Imagine having to go to a hospital in a case where no abuse or neglect has been alleged, let alone imagined, and having to bargain for the release of your own child. Now imagine that added to the knowledge that the hospital’s plan for your child is to neglect him to death, even though he has been breathing on his own for three days straight, and when other medical facilities are volunteering to offer treatment or at least palliative care for as long as the child still lives.
In a previous post I discussed how the US presently treats similar cases. It is still quite different here; generally, the parents’ wishes are afforded more weight. I think this bears repeating:
A better analogy to the Charlie Gard case [and that of Evans] is that of Jahi McMath, involving a minor child and a dispute between Jahi’s family and her hospital and doctors over the definition of brain death and when life support should end. However, the McMath case was settled by an agreement between the child’s family and the hospital in which the family was allowed to take her from the hospital and continue life support.
If the Charlie Gard case had occurred in the US, however, the legal emphasis differs. In the UK, disputes between parents and doctors are brought to court under an objective best interests of the child standard. But in the United States, in similar cases the best interests “tend to be resolved in favor of parental rights,” according to Dr. John D. Lantos, director of Bioethics Center at Children’s Mercy Kansas City. And, when courts do overrule parents’ wishes in the US, they usually do so to order care over parental objections rather than the opposite.
The different legal standard in the UK was further described by Claire Fenton-Glynn, legal scholar at the University of Cambridge:
“English law”¦does not see parents as having the ”˜right’ to make decisions on behalf of their children. The concept is called parental responsibility: That is, the parent has a responsibility to make decisions, to look after the child,” she said. “Parenthood doesn’t give them rights; parenthood gives them responsibilities.”
And lawyer and ethicist Seema Shah describes the differences between American and British law this way:
Legally, though, US courts are following the same best-interest standard as the UK, but the way it works here, at least in practice, is that “courts are deferring to parents,” Shah said.
We could go the way of Britain, however. The general drift of this country, particularly during the Obama years, was in that direction. I doubt the majority of people in this country would welcome the adoption of something like British law in cases like that of Alfie Evans, despite our general leftward shift. Actually, I doubt that the majority of people in Britain favor this policy, either, but the only poll I could find on the subject was this highly unscientific one in which 92% of respondents said Alfie’s parents should have been allowed to take him to Italy. My guess is that although that might not be the true figure, it still represents the fact that a strong majority of people in Britain are not happy with the decision of their government.
But more and more it seems as though judges and elected officials are going in an entirely different direction than the people they are supposed to represent and serve. It is not the least bit surprising that this tends to be in the direction of increasing their own power over those citizens. The Alfie Evans case is a particularly poignant and stark example of the exercise of this power.
“But more and more it seems as though judges and elected officials are going in an entirely different direction than the people they are supposed to represent and serve. It is not the least bit surprising that this tends to be in the direction of increasing their own power over those citizens.” [Neo]
. . . and I reiterate my comment (@ 3:29 pm) from your Bill Cosby post:
So who got to use the body for spare bio parts?
As an illustration of the difference regarding British and American law regarding libel, consider the review that Graham Greene wrote on a Shirley Temple movie. Bing Search: Graham Greene Shirley Temple libel. Greene’s review is reprinted in “thecharnelhouse” link.
His review couldn’t be considered libel material in the US, but was in the United Kingdom. He lost the lawsuit in the UK. I read that one financial consequence was that Greene no longer had the funds to publish a little magazine.
While I have enjoyed reading a number of his books- Travels With My Aunt is hilarious- Greene’s political stance is another matter. From the safety of the French Riveria- or was it Switzerland- Greene stated that given the choice between living in the US or in the Soviet Union, he would choose the Soviet Union. As did his friend Kim Philby. Kim Philby was Greene’s supervisor in the Brit Secret Service in WW2.
If Graham Greene had to pay out some money for what he wrote about Shirley Temple, I am not going to shed many tears.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-04-17/news/9904170347_1_kim-philby-graham-greene-spy-kim
I am an American Evertonian.
I have heard much from my Liverpool online mates and I can assure you that they largely tend to back the UK policy on this, and blame the media and the church (mind you, most of these folks are strong atheists and socialists) for attacking the institution of Alder Hey (one to which I have given money in the past.)
These same folks go absolutely wild whenever there is a US school shooting. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, they can hardly comprehend that they are subject to the same accusations of “scum” and “murderers” that they hurl at those who defend 2A principles and rights. On the whole I get along famously with these folks, which I think you understand, but the gulf between us is wide and widening. The Trump ascendancy makes us as a nation the enemy of many who loved us under Obama.
I don’t even pretend to have an answer. I can affirm that the NHS is the state religion of the UK. Criticize it at your peril.
“Parenthood doesn’t give them rights; parenthood gives them responsibilities”.
Parental rights rest upon the premise that the great majority of parents have a deep emotional investment in their children. Thus, the child’s welfare as a primary consideration is a given.
Whereas the State, necessarily views children… as statistics.
To me the most disturbingly totalitarian part of this was that the parents were not allowed to leave the country with the child. (They were not allowed to take him home because they were a “flight risk,” likely to take him to Italy.) A country that has to keep its people from leaving is a country that is in deep trouble. This was the mark of the Soviet Union; the people could not be allowed to leave the control of the state. I hope that the British people can recover their once-great spirit of freedom.
Jeannine:
The British lost “their once-great spirit of freedom” long ago. Demographically that loss occurred before the American Revolution, with the Scots-Irish in particular fleeing to the New World.
Britishers have had many, many occasions to assert and reassert their freedom, and have not done so. In 1945 the Left was voted in, Churchill was ‘dethroned’, the NHS was immediately created. When India’s independence was granted in 1948 and split into Pakistan and India, a lot of the displaced took advantage of the British Commonwealth of Nations to begin the influx of what are now called Asians into England. When Idi Amin told all non-blacks to get the H out of Uganda, those people (mostly Indian) flooded into the UK because they’d been granted dual citizenship when Uganda ceased to be a colony.
So the patient, stoic, trusting Brits stood on the sideline like sheep, wanting a nanny state, allowing their country to become much less than it was ever before, and can never be again. The wartime loss of hundreds of thousands of young men by death in WWII combat contributed. Maggie Thatcher was an exceptional person, but the British Navy was so depleted the US had to assist in the Falklands War.
Many Brits live in what are ironically called “Estates”, but are actually public housing.
The UK has an official state religion, another signal difference between us and them.
Bottom line: Brits have been ruled a long time, and have willingly surrendered those freedoms so arduously won so long ago. The Magna Carta was in 1215!
I’ve not yet abandoned being a social creature but these folks that insist on telling me what is best for me, without a moments consideration for my point of view on the subject, are pushing me toward leaving them behind, in Thoreau style.
“Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under the omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Note that they exercised their power so as to make the young boy die. I call that obscene.
What’s it all about, Alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What’s it all about when you sort it out, Alfie?
Are we meant to take more than we give
Or are we meant to be kind?
And if only fools are kind, Alfie
Then I guess it is wise to be cruel
And if life belongs only to the strong, Alfie
What will you lend on an old golden rule?
As sure as I believe there’s a heaven above, Alfie
I know there’s something much more,
Something even non-believers can believe in
I believe in love, Alfie
Without true love we just exist, Alfie
Until you find the love you’ve missed you’re nothing, Alfie
When you walk let your heart lead the way
And you’ll find love any day, Alfie
Alfie
Songwriters: Burt Bacharach / Hal David
Alfie lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Things are different in the US. Are they different enough that the deciders in a US Alfie case risk being killed? I hope we don’t find out.
When it looked as if the UK might be occupied in early WW II, the government published a pamphlet on how to resist the occupation. It was written by a veteran of the Spanish Civil War.
One item he mentioned stuck with me. If you see, he said, a friend driving a truck for the Germans, there are two possibilities. One is that he is willingly working for the Germans and so should be killed. The other is that he is being forced to work for the Germans and wants to be killed.
The point was, whatever the case, kill him.
And if it’s your kid, and you’re crazy with grief, and the Bigs have treated you like crap and you have nothing to lose…. And then who’s going to be on the jury? Strike all parents and grandparents?
Aesopfan,
Yes. And the Cilla Black version is THE one.
Saw this after I posted; Steyn assumes his readers will recognize the line, because he never quotes the lyrics or refers to the song.
https://www.steynonline.com/8616/life-belongs-only-to-the-strong
“Likewise there is no compelling reason for the British state to kill Alfie. So, when the Pope has championed his cause and the Italian government has conferred citizenship upon him and there is a plane standing by to fly him to the Continent, why not err on the side of generosity? Why not let his parents enjoy whatever extra time may remain with their helpless child? Why is it so necessary for the British bureaucracy to be seen to kill this two-year-old on their timetable?
One might almost get the impression that the state’s determination to teach British parents who’s really in charge overrides other considerations. “
One of the lines in the song makes sense in the original context, but, having repurposed it, I think I would make this change:
Until we find the love we’ve missed, we’re nothing, Alfie.
There is no love in the British medical or legal system at all.
Apparently there is a book of essays coming out pondering whether fascism or something like it could ever happen in the US. Cuz Trump, you know. When feeling particularly pessimistic I say yes it can and already is but then I can’t imagine something like this ever happening here. The outrage would be beyond belief. I think.
Nobody cares more about me and my family than I do. That should be the decider.
One common thread in the stories of Charlie Gard and Alfie is the religion of the parents.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/donald-trump-offers-to-help-charlie-gard/532551/
“The case also has religious dimensions: On their instagram page, Yates and Gard documented their celebration of their son’s baptism and showed him clutching a pendant of St. Jude, the Catholic figure most often associated with hospitals and medical care. ”
Would the court and hospital have treated a Muslim, Jewish, or Protestant child the same?
Maybe, maybe not – but I hope we never have the opportunity to find out.
https://amgreatness.com/2018/04/26/alfie-evans-from-the-cradle-to-the-grave/
“It’s a good thing then, that we in America–or at least those of us called “deplorable”–continue to cling to our guns and religion. We cling to them because they exist as constant reminders of who we are, the ideals we value, and the things we would stand against. Our guns offering both, symbolic reminders of, and real protections against, this kind of state encroachment on our rights. And our religion that–even to the non-religious among us–affirms the metaphysical basis for our natural rights and inherent dignity, guarding us against the kind of moral and spiritual rot that would allow seemingly good and intelligent people ever to consider that starving a child is ethically superior to allowing his loving parents to do everything in their power to extend his life.”
When feeling particularly pessimistic I say yes it can and already is but then I can’t imagine something like this ever happening here. The outrage would be beyond belief. I think.
Meaningless outrage such as with Terry Schiavo case.
As for fascism in the USA, that is partially due to Operation Paperclip, not the REpublicans.
Just as people tolerated and permitted Hussein killing babies that survived partial birth abortion, so the same is the case with the human livestock in Britain. Both people are weak and corrupt, without the willpower to do something effective about it.
False flag about Operation Paperclip, Ymar.
Progressivism, which contains the essence of Fascism (the State, run by experts on behalf of the drones in their millions) began as a movement in the US over 100 years ago. And as many informed people understand, Nazis were not Fascists, but National Socialists. “Fascism” is a convenient club in the hands of many with which to beat their opposition.
So how did the postwar importation of the Von Brauns and the Tellers by Paperclip generate American “fascism”?
You should probably look up what false flag means Frog. The term you might have been looking for was “fake news” instead.
But irregardless: Operation Paperclip wasn’t a false flag or a fake news item.
http://www.operationpaperclip.info/
Operation Paperclip was the codename under which the US intelligence and military services extricated scientists from Germany, during and after the final stages of World War II. The project was originally called Operation Overcast, and is sometimes also known as Project Paperclip.
Of particular interest were scientists specialising in aerodynamics and rocketry (such as those involved in the V-1 and V-2 projects), chemical weapons, chemical reaction technology and medicine. These scientists and their families were secretly brought to the United States, without State Department review and approval; their service for Hitler’s Third Reich, NSDAP and SS memberships as well as the classification of many as war criminals or security threats also disqualified them from officially obtaining visas. An aim of the operation was capturing equipment before the Soviets came in. The US Army destroyed some of the German equipment to prevent it from being captured by the advancing Soviet Army.
The majority of the scientists, numbering almost 500, were deployed at White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico, Fort Bliss, Texas and Huntsville, Alabama to work on guided missile and ballistic missile technology. This in turn led to the foundation of NASA and the US ICBM program.
Much of the information surrounding Operation Paperclip is still classified.
Separate from Paperclip was an even-more-secret effort to capture German nuclear secrets, equipment and personnel (Operation Alsos). Another American project (TICOM) gathered German experts in cryptography.
This is like Alt American history, the stuff they didn’t tell us in public education/indoctrination.
Just because people heard about the Deep State a few months or years ago, doesn’t mean they are experts on the DS.
Nazis were fascists and they were nationalists and they were socialists. It’s not an either or Red vs Blue choice given to the peons. It’s more complicated and problematic than that. Sorta like medicine and surgery.
“Fascism” is a convenient club in the hands of many with which to beat their opposition.
And yet Demoncrats, for all that they cry about Bush Hitler and Trum Hitler, never once, to my knowledge, mentioned Operation Paperclip. It wasn’t part of their orders.
Ever hear of Gramsci? McCarthy talking about US soviet agents in the highest echelons of government?
What makes people think America is immune to fascism when you bring in a bunch of high level fascist agents and put them in the highest levels of the US rocket problem and military industrial complex. What did you people think Eisenhower was even warning you about concerning the Military Industrial Complex back when tv was such a rarity?
While it is true fascism and eugenics has a long history in the United States of America, it didn’t get really going until after WW2 ended.
Since there’s no news on what NHS did with Alfie’s corpse, I would have to assume they have now sold it on the black market for R/D and stem cell purposes. I am sure they made big bucks on that while the internet does Fake Rage and other circus clown acts.
From Neo’s current and past post,
“In the UK, disputes between parents and doctors are brought to court under an objective best interests of the child standard.”
I’m hardly an expert, but I think it’s true that the practical reality of the care given is that of the best interest of the patient within the rather severe economic limitations dictated by the NICE (National Institute of health and Care Excellence.)
Don’t you love that euphemism about Excellence? The US and the Brits and Orwell are completely in synch on this.
Now Neo is referring to the court’s actions, not NICE or the hospitals, but would the court command care beyond what NICE rules allow? I doubt it.
_______
It used to be the case that only minimal dental and eye care private insurance plans were legal in Canada. After a Canadian Supreme Court case proved that many people were dying while waiting for health care, they decided that banning major private health insurance was unconstitutional.
I also heard a recent conversation suggesting that nearly everyone of means in the U.K. has a private insurance plan. I don’t know the accuracy of that.
So how did the postwar importation of the Von Brauns and the Tellers by Paperclip generate American “fascism”?
Is it easier to believe that America became Nazified instead of adopting fascism?
Your little word games would make the Leftist mind control Linguistics master Chomsky, cry out in envy.
Certainly FDR and all those Soviet agents people ignored from McCarthy’s warnings, made America into a socialist and communist paradise by now. But we all know America can’t be socialist or communist because we’re a democratic republic (a dead republic), of course.
I also heard a recent conversation suggesting that nearly everyone of means in the U.K. has a private insurance plan.
Congress has a private care plan and it is not Obamacare. They are immune, after all to the laws that only affect little people.
I wouldn’t be surprised that EU citizens and denizens and subjects have access to EU style backup healthcare plans if the Brits don’t like their local NHS version.
As I’ve commented here before, more and more it just seems to me as if the people of Western Europe have fallen under some kind of evil spell.
Here, at some remove, I look at what’s happening over there and am just incredulous that those on the scene can’t wake the hell up, can’t see the obvious peril they are in, the all too evident truth that’s staring them right in the face, the onrushing doom that their decisions, and even more their lack of action, is making more and more inevitable.
At least with art there is a “there” there. In others, not so much.
I’m getting echoes of Humpty Dumpty (from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland) here: “It’s just a matter of who’s to be master, that’s all”. Humpty was talking of words and meanings, and this was meant to be a humorous episode.
But when you’re describing The State, it isn’t so funny (as we’ve seen in these two cases of babies declared “unworthy of life” by the NHS). “All within the State, nothing outside the State”.
In the USA, technically, The State is still subordinate to The People.
In Britain, obviously, The State is Master-of-All, and shall not be questioned in its judgments.
Ymar
It is you who was waving a false flag, and still do so. Nazis were National Socialists. Get it?
Why was Operation Paperclip a bad thing? To the victors belong the spoils. You seem pouty because the Stalinist-ridden DOS was bypassed. The Soviets were only an anti-German ally in WWII. It is a good thing some Kraut stuff was destroyed to keep it out of Soviet hands, and the best of the rocket boys went to work in the USA. They themselves would have told you, thank God I am not in the USSR! They were grateful and their work proved that.
Frog:
It is curious that Ymar is silent about Unit 731 and the biological and chemical weapons “work and scientific data” generated by Japan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
allthatsinteresting.com/unit-731 and others….
He has been pushing his paperclip for months now.
Imagine if instead of Alfie Evans, the child was the son of Pakistani or African immigrants, and his case gained international notoriety just like this one did.
Do you actually think the British would have let this play out the same way? Fat chance.
All Evans was was just another worthless white male. Doing anything to help him would just reinforce England as slaves to the “patriarchy” and “white privilege”.
mezzrow Says:
“I don’t even pretend to have an answer. I can affirm that the NHS is the state religion of the UK. Criticize it at your peril.”
This brought to mind the bizarre opening ceremony of the London 2012 olympics. See the pictures in this DailyMail article
At least the dancers dressed as NHS nurses were not killing the black kids in the hospital beds. But what about the kids doing backflips on the giant hospital bed while the nurses cheered them on?
This is just weird.
I shudder to think that a total takeover of the medical system is in our future. Here in California all the leading Democrat candidates for Governor and many in the legislature vow to implement “Medicare for all.” This nearly passed last year but for the Democrat leader of the Assembly who had a sane moment when no one could figure out where the $400 billion per year tab would come from. This is not deterring the current crop of candidates.
Frog–Our victory in WWII was far less certain than those looking back now think it was, as we basically didn’t so much out general as out produce our enemies.
They say that military amateurs talk strategy and tactics, while professionals talk logistics.
Well, we drowned our enemies in the tanks and planes, warships, artillery pieces, torpedoes, rifles, bombs, and bullets the country we turned into one big 24/7 armaments factory produced, while we simultaneously denied the enemy the access to raw materials, the war resources they absolutely had to have, and systematically destroyed their factories.
Quite often the German versions of weapons were superior to ours. But, we could replace and double or triple the war materiel and armaments we lost and, eventually, they couldn’t.
As is also said, “quantity has a quality all it’s own.”
Nonetheless, a few wrong decisions here and there by us, and we could very easily have been overwhelmed, and conquered.
PAPERCLIP was not the only deal with the Devil the U.S. made at the end of WWII when, I am sure, the people in power, quite well aware of their close call, had a much different mindset and priorities than the ones we have today.
You’ve heard of the Nazi’s Dr. Mengele, how about Japan’s WWII Unit 731, and Lt. Gen. Ishii?
Unit 731 was a biological and chemical warfare experiment unit that the Japanese Emperor established by Imperial rescript in 1936, disguising it’s purpose by calling it the “Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army.”
Unit 731 was headquartered in Northern Manchuria, 15 miles south of the city of Harbin, at a very secure guarded site at PingFan. The base at PingFan had a perimeter of almost four miles, an airfield, and a rail spur from Harbin, 150 buildings, and 3,000 employees, PingFan was declared a Special Military Region, and was very securely fortified and guarded.
Fragmentary records are unclear, but there was also at least one other unit, Unit 100, located 150 miles to the south at Changchun, and possibly others as well.
Unit 731 was headed by Dr. Shiro Ishii, who was eventually promoted to Lt. General, and it operated for almost 10 years, until the very end of WWII.
Unit 731 carried out their gruesome and invariably fatal experiments on humans–local Communists, Mongolians, captured Russian soldiers, the mentally handicapped, Jews, Koreans, stateless White Russians, spies, criminals, various POWs (possibly some of them Americans), passers by, anyone they could lay their hands on.
Experiments on humans reportedly not only included infection with anthrax, typhoid, and other infectious diseases but also live dissection of prisoners without anesthesia, exposing prisoners to low air pressure, freezing of prisoners, removal of limbs, blood, and organs (often without anesthesia) to see the results, exposing humans to fragmentation rounds containing infectious agents, and other experiments.
All in all, Unit 731 apparently performed much more barbaric experiments–no anesthesia used here–on many more people than the Nazi’s Mengele ever did.
How many and who did they experiment on? The estimates range from 850 to 10,000 or more. At the war’s end the Japanese Army destroyed Unit 731’s physical plant and most of it’s records, so we’re not really sure.
I say American POWS because, according to the couple of examples of Congressional testimony on this issue, the doctors from Unit 731 visited a nearby POW camp, 300 miles from Harbin at Mukden, that held 1,500 American POWs–many of them survivors of the Bataan Death March, examined and injected some of them, and after these visits some of the POWs became very ill, Ishii’s doctors carefully followed the injectees progress and, when some died, vivisected them, or took away their bodies.
Field tests of agents and delivery methods developed at Unit 731 were conducted in China, spreading diseases that killed tens of thousands of Chinese, and some claim killed hundreds of thousands, and some of the diseases Unit 731 established are now reportedly endemic to areas of China that–before Unit 731–had never had any instances of them.
It is also claimed that after Unit 731 was destroyed and some of its experimental animals were released/escaped, there arouse an epidemic that killed an estimated 30,000 Chinese living in the surrounding area.
In the final desperate days of the war, Gen. Ishii suggested to the Japanese military that they use the pathogens he had perfected, and put them on some of the 5,000 balloon bombs they were currently bombarding the West coast of the U.S. with, to start epidemics like they had apparently started in China.
Luckily, they turned that idea down.
At the end of the war the U.S. government made a deal with the leadership of Unit 731, and in return for the results of their “experiments”–I’d presume notes, slides, samples, etc.–gotten using methods we would never use–Ishii and his associates were given immunity from arrest and prosecution.
Gen. Dr. Ishii, the head of the project, went back to Japan, was awarded a government pension, and continued his “medical research” until he died.
And the other ”scientists”–many the cream of the Japanese scientific community–who ran his labs, or circulated through Unit 731’s labs over the years?
Why, they went back to Japan as well, often to distinguished careers and positions.
The ordinary soldiers who guarded and executed the experimentees if the experiments didn’t kill them outright, experimentees they referred to as maruta, or “logs”?
As of a couple of decades ago, they were still holding annual reunions in Tokyo, to reminisce about the “good old days” at Unit 731.
How come what happened at Unit 731 isn’t as well known as what happened at Auschwitz or Dachau?
Now, that’s a good question.
Snow on Pine
One basic feature of WWII is often ignored; Germany, Japan, and Italy did not coordinate their war efforts against the Allies, it just wasn’t a matter of material and manpower overwhelming the Axis.
Thinking about things demonic, and the demonic was certainly at work at Auschwitz and at Unit 731 and, as I survey the length and breadth of past human history, the demonic was a regular visitor, in fact, the background music to our evolution.
The common lot of the vast majority of humans down through the ages has been one of privation, starvation, violence, cold, illness–a short and brutal life–and of being dominated. Only the tiny fraction of the population at the top of whatever pyramid existed ever really lived a relatively good life of enough food, shelter, clothing–and sometimes riches, and had access to whatever opportunities there were.
We here in recent centuries in the West, and particularly here in the United States, are the very, very rare exceptions; we, the great mass of us, stand in the light and fresh air, stand on the backs of our hardworking, clear-eyed, tough, brave, and vigilant ancestors–they were the ones who made it possible for us to stand above the usual muck and mire, the violence, the privation, illness, short life, and domination, and we should never forget their sacrifices and their efforts.
As Ronald Reagan very wisely said, though,
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
What worries me though, is that today’s protected and cosseted, ahistorical crowd has no real clue about how special, and extraordinarily unusual and privileged we and our situation are–they think it’s always been this way, and always will be, automatically–and how we inherited our privileged positions as the result of untold past generations of hard, back-breaking work, sacrifice, courage, and vigilance.
For them, the wolf at the door is something that will never come. It’s as far away as Pluto.
They don’t have a clue about–if we don’t stand vigilant, take action, and do the things that Reagan recommended–just how fast things could come crashing down, and we’d be right back down in the “usual,” in the muck, shivering, wondering where our next meal was coming from, and who was going to maybe dole it out to us in return for our “service,” or maybe take it away from us.
How come what happened at Unit 731 isn’t as well known as what happened at Auschwitz or Dachau?
American nationalists don’t want to be told the truth because not even love can hide the pain of understanding that loot during war doesn’t quite justify the exceptional American righteousness that was sent as propaganda to the masses.
Every nation has their own divine myths and histories which prop up the ruling elite. Japan included, Nazi Aryans included, American Manifest Destiny included. Rarely does any of it have any relationship with fact or truth.
American Baby Boomers often tell me that Japan should tell the REAL HISTORY instead of portraying japan’s nationalism in a lighter note. Well, that would make sense… if Americans actually weren’t hypocrites on that matter and covered up their own history…
National histories are an important security and morale concern for the people. If people could handle the truth, then why didn’t FDR tell people the truth. Because you can’t handle the truth. Doesn’t matter if you are Japs or Amis.
Why was Operation Paperclip a bad thing?
*Rolls eyes*
It is curious that Ymar is silent about Unit 731 and the biological and chemical weapons “work and scientific data” generated by Japan.
Pine beat me too it. 731 isn’t for girls and boys like Om, so I thought I would be merciful for once in not exposing the connections between USA self righteous nationalism and 731. Guess that didn’t work. *Shrugs* Not my fault this time.
Bull puckey Yamar. You just gloss over that history while ranting about the paperclips. Yes Snow on Pine beat you to it, and you make a sly excuse for the evil that was done. I’ve known about that part of Japan’s history for a long time. Snow and I flushed you out.
I’m surprised you haven’t spun a yarn about the Soviet’s taking some of the Unit’s “scientists” back to work for Uncle Joe. The Soviets did try some as war criminals. Do you homework.