I like him best when he\u2019s writing about baseball, but these are two good ones.<\/p>\n
The first is a exposition (with help by George Weigel) of the slow and steady suicide of Europe<\/a>. Will blames secularism, and makes a good case.<\/p>\n Europe itself is withering. On the day of John Paul II\u2019s funeral, the European Union\u2019s statistics agency reported that the decline of birthrates means that within five years deaths will exceed births in the European Union. By 2013 Italy\u2019s population will begin to decline; the next year Germany\u2019s will begin to drop. After 2010 Europe\u2019s population growth will be entirely from immigration. By 2025 not even immigration will prevent declining fertility from accelerating what one historian calls the largest \u201csustained reduction in European population since the Black Death of the 14th century.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In his new book \u201cThe Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God,\u201d George Weigel, biographer of John Paul II, argues that Europe\u2019s \u201cdemographic suicide\u201d will cause its welfare states to buckle and is creating a \u201cvacuum into which Islamic immigrants are flowing.\u201d Since 1970 the 20 million legal Islamic immigrants equal the combined populations of Ireland, Denmark and Belgium.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat,\u201d Weigel asks, \u201cis happening when an entire continent, wealthier and healthier than ever before, declines to create the human future in the most elemental sense, by creating a next generation?\u201d His diagnosis is that Europe\u2019s deepening anemia is a consequence of living on what he considers the thin gruel of secular humanism that excludes transcendent reference points for cultural and political life. Such reference points are, he thinks, prerequisites for freedom understood as \u201cthe capacity to choose wisely and act well as a matter of habit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cdeclines to create the human future in the most elemental sense, by creating a next generation\u2026\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes\u2026that would be the end result of the preening self-absorbtion which is the fruit of secularism. I\u2019ll have to get Weigel\u2019s book. It sounds interesting.<\/p>\n Will\u2019s second piece looks at another way humanity is destroying itself via The Eugenics of Abortion<\/a>.<\/p>\n An Anglican curate, a 28-year-old woman who was born with a congenital defect of the jaw, tried to get a court to consider this a case of \u201cunlawful killing.\u201d She noted that far from being substantially handicapped, she is enjoying life \u2014 as is, by the way, her brother, who has Down syndrome, a genetic defect involving varying degrees of mental retardation. Prosecutors eventually refused to file charges, relying in part on guidance by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that stated there is \u201cno precise definition of serious handicap.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n But the prosecutors\u2019 refusal goes far toward supplying a definition. The refusal implies that any abnormality can qualify as a serious handicap because seriousness is determined not by its impact on the disabled person\u2019s life chances but by the parents\u2019 reluctance to be inconvenienced by it. How else is one to understand abortion as an alternative to surgery that corrects cleft lips and palates?<\/p>\n In Britain, more babies with Down syndrome are aborted than are allowed to be born. In America, more than 80 percent of the babies diagnosed prenatally with Down syndrome are aborted. This is dismaying to, among others, the American Association of People with Disabilities, whose premise is that \u201cdisability is a natural part of the human experience.\u201d <\/p>\n Pretty staggering, isn\u2019t it, that we now have to be reminded that \u201cdisability is a natural part of the human experience?\u201d <\/strong> I think it is. Staggering, I mean, that we have to be reminded. Once upon a time, everyone understood that part of the blessing of being one of the strong ones was that you got to protect the weak.<\/p>\n Maybe there are no more strong ones. Maybe everyone is weak. The ones with the strongest bodies might have the weakests minds and spirits.<\/p>\n I think it\u2019s scary as hell. The next step from this would be, \u201chey, you were healthy enough to be allowed to be born, but it\u2019s too bad about that car-accident or that disease\u2026now, there\u2019s really no point in letting you live. You\u2019ll have to just die, please.\u201d<\/p>\n Oh, what am I talking about. We\u2019ve already REACHED that point. Ask the parents of Terri Schiavo.<\/p>\n Troubling, troubling days.<\/p>\n Read Mark\u2019s excellent and moving piece over at Stones Cry Out<\/a>, in which he writes about a 5 year old girl with Downs Syndrome, and the young blind boy she has helped. In a world where only physical perfection is counted as worthy, the world would be short this source of immediate and unconditional love and compassion\u2026and then, what monsters we shall all be.<\/p>\n