“I’ve Got An Idea!”

1) Invariably, in a Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney movie, during some predicament which requires money to be raised, one of them will explain “Hey Guys! I have an idea! Let’s put on a show!”

2) There is news now that doctors in the Netherlands are openly and actively euthanasing newborn infants whom they believe are better off dead, due to either suffering or likely imminent death even without intervention.

What do these have to do with each other?

Hitler didn’t come along one day saying “Hey Guys! I have an idea! Let’s kill all the Jews!” to which everyone responded, “Wow. Great idea Adolf!” Things don’t and didn’t work that way. It started with forced sterilization and euthanasia of other undesirables. First, it was the mentally ill and retarded. By 1939 (but before the war started) there was an active program of killing mental patients and of selecting retarded or deformed children under three to be taken from their parents and killed.

I’m not sure exactly what caused the German people to allow the Holocaust to happen. But I’m convinced that this type of killing takes getting used to. Once you convince yourself that society would be better off getting rid of the mentally ill, its simply an easier step mentally to consider getting rid of other “undesirables.”

I’m against abortion on moral terms. But I also think there is a practical argument to be made. Bright white lines can be very useful. One nice bright line is that we don’t deliberately kill innocent human beings. Legalized abortion erases that bright white line. These humans are really small, young, and actually won’t mind being killed like you or I would, right? But now there’s no natural place to draw that line, and convenience is always pushing us to kill just a few more.