The British National Party (BNP) tries to portray itself as a mainstream organisation which offers a sensible programme for the UK. When people refer to the BNP as neo-Nazi their supporters and members respond that the movement is being “smeared” as it has no associations with the policies pursued by the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) which governed Germany from 1933-1945.
As mentioned previously on this blog the statements of leading members of the BNP and the party’s own publications reveal that the organisation remains deeply imbued with Nazi beliefs. For example I’ve written concerning the statement, by Jeffrey Marshall, (the then Central London Organiser for the BNP) that disabled people should be killed as “there is not much point in keeping these people alive”, (for that post please see https://kevinmorris101.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/british-national-party-and-national-front-advocate-killing-of-the-disabled/).
On 3 March we witnessed another example of the BNP’s masque of respectability slipping. Speaking on the Victoria Derbyshire Show, (the discussion related to a mother of a severely disabled child who may have to put her child into care), Claire Khaw, a member of the BNP and the former agent for one Jeffrey Marshall poured forth as follows:
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Claire Khaw
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She should smothered it after it was born, shouldn’t she, rather than expect the taxpayer to pick up the bill?
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Why should the taxpayer pay for her severely disabled child?
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Ask her that.
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Professional sympathy seeker. Well, she ain’t getting none from me.
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We all know lots of mothers tote their severely disabled children around to get attention and rise in the pecking order of a group of mums.
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The more disabled your child, the higher you are in the pecking order.
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Claire Khaw
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Rob Corbett
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I’m sure Hitler had the same ideas at the outset, not everyone saw it the same way though eh?
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Claire Khaw
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit
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See SUICIDE, MURDER AND DEATH
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This practice preceded Hitler, Rob.
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Claire Khaw
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If it is NECESSARY for the survival of one’s society, then it is MORAL.
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Claire Khaw
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I need to articulate the views and concerns of the over-burdened taxpayer.
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Rob Corbett
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Not when you are ramming euthanasia down our throats. These aren’t the views of the masses.
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Claire Khaw
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Not just me talking about euthanasia, Rob.
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Are you saying I am responsible for the Right to Die movement?
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You are ascribing to me greater powers than I really have.
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Mariabella Hollens
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She can’t bring herself to say that she would strangle her own baby at birth, which is what she has said many many times. [Actually, I said “smother” though
I hope the midwife would do this for me to save me the trouble.]
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Peter Hinson
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It’s scary to know that Claire is loose on the streets. Hopefully she will be recaptured soon!”
Amen to Claire being recaptured soon say I!
The views expounded by Khaw have echoes of Nazi propaganda in which disabled people where described as “useless eaters. Life unworthy of life”. The propaganda lead upto the launch of the Action T-4 Programme which saw approximately 200,000 people with disabilities murdered by the Nazis for no reason other than the fact that they where disabled.
So next time the BNP accuse their detractors of “smearing” them think about the statements of Jeff Marshall, Claire Khaw and the numerous other BNP members which clearly demonstrate that the party is, in fact a thoroughly nasty and Nazi organisation.
For Claire Khaw’s blog please visit http://thevoiceofreason-ann.blogspot.com/2011/03/claire-khaw-on-victoria-derbyshire-show.html.
My Blog 
I was not proposing a general policy for disposing of the disabled.
I am saying that if I had a severely disabled baby I would see to it that it was disposed of and would ADVISE (not command) my friends and family to do the same.
What business is it of yours what I do with my severely disabled baby, you interfering person?
My views are not backed by the party. I am just someone with these opinions who happens to be a member of the BNP.
The Ancient Greeks and Romans would expose their unwanted babies.
The Inuits didn’t have much time for disability either.
As far as I know, the BNP do not have a policy on the disabled.
I would also advise you to be careful about what you say about me.
I NEVER advocated a general policy of killing the disabled. What I said is in fact quite clear, though many like you persist in deliberately misunderstanding me.
I hope you are aware about how the law of defamation works in this country and be more careful in the future.
I won’t bother suing you anyway, because you are obviously not influential and not very bright judging by the way you have cut and pasted the words and the way you have set out what you have cut and pasted, but the law is this: if you say anything about anyone that brings me into hatred, ridicule and contempt with right-thinking members of society, you will be liable for any damage caused to their reputation unless what you say is true, and it is NOT true, is it, Kevin?
If it is true, you would have to prove that it is true by quoting something I had actually said that proves what you are claiming.
Thank you for your further comment. I would remind you that this is my blog and I am under no obligation to provide you with a right of reply. However as someone who values democracy I’ve published both your comments. I will not be intimidated by you or anyone else.
Kevin
Thank you for your comment. You ask what business is it of mine what you do with your severely disabled baby? Children are not the property of their parents, they are human beings with rights. Given that disabled people are human beings (not mere possessions which one may dispose of at will) it is the business of a civilised society to ensure that people with disabilities are treated with humanity.
Merely because disabled children have been killed in the past it does not (and should not) follow that the same practice should occur in the 21st century. If we follow your argument to its logical conclusion slavery should be reintroduced on the basis that it was practiced in the ancient world and, indeed in the United States of America until the American Civil War put an end to it. Are you advocating that slavery be reintroduced?
I am, myself disabled. I was born fully sighted but lost most of my vision at around 18 months old. I’d be fascinated to know whether you regard me as someone who should be killed due to me being “severely disabled”. Can you answer that question please?
You say that your views do not express the views of the BNP as a whole. However other members (including Jeffrey Marshall and Tony Lecomber) have voiced opinions similar to yours, consequently one can conclude that a significant segment in all probability the majority) of the party share your perspective on this issue.
Finally if you express yourself in a public forum (as you do in your blog and when you participate in radio debates etc) you must expect people to exercise their democratic right to disagree with you.
Please understand that I was not suggesting that I would go around killing other people’s disabled babies or that the government should embark on a policy of organised extermination.
All I was saying or was trying to say was that I would have smothered my own severely disabled baby if I knew it was going to turn out like Celyn.
I would have wanted the option of telling the midwife to do it for me to save me the trouble of doing it myself.
Whether your mother should have rejected you or not would have been a matter between you and her. It is none of my business.
I would personally tolerate phyisical disability, but not mental disability. So if I had been your mother I would not have rejected you.
Of course people should be able to criticise me for my views, but it is exasperating to read all the “Claire Khaw said disabled people should all be killed” comments.
It is a great pity that these people are not really worth suing or I would now be instructing solicitors.
Thank you for your comment. It had been consigned to my spam folder (odd as I’d approved previous comments by you) which explains the delay in it appearing here.
What gives you the right to judge the quality of another person’s life? and, in any case isn’t any judgement of another individual’s quality of life purely subjective? Surely you can not know what is going on in the mind of any individual other than yourself. Consequently you may feel that the quality of life of a person with disabilities is so low that there is no value in that person continuing to live. However the disabled person in question may not be able to speak or move but he/she may have a very rich mental existence which can not be grasped (or, at least only dimmly so) by an outside observer. What gives you (or anyone else) the right to determine that a particular person with disabilities is not worthy of life?
In your view at what point does an individual acquire rights? I ask because you say that a mother should have the absolute right to kill her disabled child. At what point does the disabled person acquire a right to life? (I.E is there an age at which he/she starts being worthy of respect or is he/she always at the mercy of his parents who may, at any time murder him)?
Your arguments seem to be predicated on the idea that humans only have worth insofar as they can contribute to society. Why should the so-called good of society be put before the interests of a living disabled individual and what is the moral basis of so doing?
Nazi Germany put the interests of the ayrian race before all else which lead to the killing of approximately 200,000 people with disabilities and the murder of around 6 million Jews. Again Communist societies (as with the Nazis) trampled on the individual in the name of the collective good of the proletariat which has lead to the mass killing of “kulaks” etc. Your views lead down a dangerous road.
On the question of slavery, I see no moral problem in reintroducing it. The Koran after all tolerates slavery and I am a Koranist, ie someone guided by Koranic principles.
I would however make slaves government property and hire them out to employers, reminding them that the slaves are government property and government properly must not be damaged or injured.
Slave visitors – a bit like social visitors – would be given the task of inspecting the treatment of government property and seeing that the slave is working as well as it can.
Enslaving bankers, bankrupts or people who have caused more damage than they can repay, would be the ideal candidates for such a system of slavery.
Re Kevin Morris’ comment of March 7, 2011 at 4:46 pm:
We all have a right to life, do we not? But does that prevent us from killed? No.
The person who is expected to bring up a severely disabled child should certainly have a say in whether or not he or she wishes to assume such a burden.
If this person chooses not to, what business is it of anyone else’s?
What is necessary is what is moral. It is necessary that a society protects itself from making irrational decisions and using limited resources irrationally.
Saying this does not mean I want to exterminate 6 million Jews, or would result in the death of anyone else, apart from my hypothetical severely disabled baby.
As I have already said, I have no intention of coming round to your home to kill your severely disabled baby and have no desire to send anyone else round to do so.
If parents had to look after with their own resources their own severely disabled babies I am pretty certain that they would be doing as I suggest, anyway.
A person acquires rights the moment they are capable of asserting them, and it is different from case to case and individual to individual.
Thank you for your further comment.
You ask what business it is of the state whether a mother kills her disabled baby. Your question presupposes that children are mere property which we can dispose of at will. This is not the case legally (obviously) nor should it be the case in practice. Children are individuals in their own right (not mere possessions which can be thrown away in the event that the owner tires of them). To argue that children are property is to debase the bonds of love and tenderness which bind child and mother together. Love and affection can not be measured by some utilitarian modern-day Jeremy Bentham who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Under the T-4 Programme in Nazi Germany parents had (in theory at least) the right not to give up their disabled children to the state for extermination. However, in practice families where pressured into giving up their ofspring by, for example the threat of being called up, for military service if they failed to comply. With or without state and/or societal coercion the murder of disabled people is abhorent and a voluntary system would (almost certainly) quickly degenerate into a compulsary one.
Your argument that most parents would (in the absence of a welfare state) choose to kill their disabled ofspring does not hold water. In Nazi Germany it was due to the protests of parents together with prominent religious leaders that the official phase of the T-4 Programme was halted in 1941 (although the Programme continued, in secret until the end of the war). The widespread opposition to the Programme demonstrates that very many parents loved their disabled children and where prepared to brave the cruelty of the Nazi state to protest against their murder. Again long before the welfare state came along charities existed for the care of disabled people and many children received care provided by the voluntary sector (I.E. disabled people received charitable support rather than being killed, in large numbers by their parents).
Granted that a significant number of mothers say that they would have considered an abortion had they known that their future child was going to be severely disabled, however the overwhelming majority of mothers, who express this opinion go on to be loving mothers to their disabled ofspring. Love is an extremely powerful force and you grossly underestimate its power.
Kevin
The law is the wind and the people the grass, Kevin.
When the wind blows the grass will bend.
I am concerned to discuss the most rational way to allocate limited resources.
It seems I have started something anyway, for today we have
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1363637/Babies-born-23-weeks-left-die-says-NHS-chief.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z58b4
Should very premature babies be saved?
Babies born 4 months early – in the 23rd week of pregnancy – exist on the very edge of life. A few go on to survive – truly ‘miracle babies’ – but most die. Of the few that do survive, many will face long-term disabilities. A new BBC2 documentary follows the babies born in such extreme prematurity on a Birmingham neonatal unit to ask the difficult question: is it always right to keep them alive? Jane Garvey meets Lucy, whose daughter Matilda did survive, to talk about the choices she had to make during that crucial time in intensive care. Professor David Field, president of the British Association of Perinatal Medicine and Daphne Austin, consultant in Public Health Medicine, discuss the poor outcomes of such premature babies, and whether the NHS has got its priorities right.
Thank you for your comment.
There is an important difference between actively killing people and debates regarding the use of finite medical resources. To “smother” a disabled child or, indeed any child is barbaric and is a wholly separate issue from whether specific treatments and/or techniques should be, in some manner rationed. In other words we should not conflate the murder of disabled children with questions concerning the utilisation of limited resources.
Your comments (on your blog and on Radio 5) have (rightly in my view) aroused a great deal of indignation. Most people find your opinions noxious (and rightly so).
Kevin, it is no skin off your nose if I smother my own very disabled baby. If you are a taxpayer you would be definitely better off. Since I am the person expected to ruin my life and expend my resources bringing up a very disabled child at the expense of my healthy children, I would argue that I am the one doing the right thing by society, not you and people like you, who prefer to wear your hearts on your sleeves.
The discussions now on Radio 4 and TV are just what I was hoping for: an intelligent debate on how to use most rationally use limited resources.
I have been vindicated.
claire, thank you for your comment. I am indeed a taxpayer nut, unlike you i have no objection to my taxes being used to support disabled children nor do the overwhelming majority of the british public. When a lady gives birth to a child she, together with the father has an obligation, both legal and moral to look after the baby. You say i ware my heart on my sleeve. Perhaps so but at least i have a heart to ware …
claire, the intelligent debate to which you refer won’t lead to the government authorising parents to murder their severely disabled children! i think that you have had a very fair crack of the whip on this subject so i won’t accept any further comments from you unless you are responding to a further comment from a commenter other than myself. Kevin
Re your reply of March 8, 2011 at 8:47 am
Not all mothers who give birth are married. In fact, about half of them are not.
Most taxpayers would rather not support the children of non-taxpayers, if they were asked about it.
Claire Khaw can’t keep up with her own opinions can she? She does advocate killing babies and think midwives should do it. She is also hideous about single mothers, white people (in particular white women). She shouldn’t have sought to be a British citizen because she seemingly hates the indigenous population, as the BNP so calls. Her fame seeking nonsense means she just wilfully, without thought, rationale, or intellectual/critical thinking, spouts attention seeking views that are in conflict with eachother. Any true Koranist wouldn’t peel the most vile passages in the Koran to follow but would gain a peaceful way of life. Although to be fair a person consulting such ancient texts for guidance is unhinged. Claire Khaw is without doubt a narcissist. Her inflated sense of self worth and importance makes her more laughable than harmful, most people just assume she’s a joke, a spoof. I think her mental health issues make her more Charlie Sheen than Manson.
Any true Koranist wouldn’t peel the most vile passages in the Koran to follow but would gain a peaceful way of life. – is this a fact?
Although to be fair a person consulting such ancient texts for guidance is unhinged. – is this actually fair?
Incidentally can Claire validate her ludicrous claims about tax payers and what they would like to fund? Most taxpayers are pretty happy funding children.
Most people are afraid of speaking their minds these days, in case they lose their jobs.
So, Kevin, are you not going to change the headline “CLAIRE KHAW OF THE BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY ADVOCATES KILLING THE DISABLED”?
I have explained to you how the libel laws work.
If you know what is good for you you would find a different way of expressing this.
Kevin, if you are so confident that your statement “CLAIRE KHAW OF THE BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY ADVOCATES KILLING THE DISABLED” is in fact true, then please give me your name and address for me to pass on to my solicitors.
It would save me the trouble of tracking you down.
I suggest that you take legal advice urgently.
To advocate is to argue in favour of a position or to support a particular cause (see, for example http://www.thefreedictionary.com/advocates ). On your blog, “The Voice of Reason” you say “She should smothered it after it was born, shouldn’t she, rather than expect the taxpayer to pick up the bill?” Again, later in the same post it states “Mariabella Hollens block quote end block quote She can’t bring herself to say that she would strangle her own baby at birth, which is what she has said many many times. [Actually, I said “smother” though I hope the midwife would do this for me to save me the trouble”. Anyone reading your blog would come to the conclusion that you are advocating that mothers of severely disabled children kill their ofspring.
I repeat:
I DO NOT ADVOCATE A GENERAL POLICY OF EXTERMINATION.
If the taxpayer was not forced to pay for anyone else’s child – either able-bodied or disabled – most parents faced with a severely disabled baby will do what I recommend anyway.
That is the very simple point I am trying to make.
This is what most people with limited resources who do not live in a welfare state would do.
I am sure you all know this anyway. You all know I am right, and that is why you cannot bear the ugly truth.
I mentioned this debate to a friend born in the 40s. He told me that in pre-welfare state days severely disabled babies would be made comfortable and then allowed to die.
This was the only viable and rational policy when you have limited resources and need to bring up the next generation. Why would you wish to ruin the lives of your healthy children and not looking after them properly while devoting precious resources to a child that is only going to die young or never be able to lead a normal independent life?
He also said it seems that it is always the ones who contribute least to the state who make the most demands on it.
You can call him Nazi if you like, but this sort thing was done as a matter of course long before Hitler was even born.
If you call me Nazi, you would be calling your grandparents and their parents etc Nazis, and that would be a very very very silly thing to do.
Why stop at killing disabled babies Claire? Surely if you think it’s OK for a mother to decide to have her own baby smothered to death because it’s disabled, then why not also because it’s ugly, or cries too much, or the wrong colour? How would you decide when it was and when it wasn’t OK to off your own offspring? Do you think babies deserve any rights and protection at all or should the mother always decide what is best and whether or not the child should be allowed to live or die?
Babies in effect have no rights. If your mum and dad want you dead you ain’t got no chance. Fortunately, enough people are giving birth and nurturing the babies they choose to have and love so that they reach adulthood.
There is no epidemic of infanticide committed by parents, and so the world continues turn on its axis.
If however we all went mad and killed our babies for no good reason, then we deserve to become extinct.
Either way, it’s all sorted.
A shocking response but it doesn’t surprise me given your comment (sighted below) in which you state that had you given birth to a child with the degree of disability of David Cameron’s young son, Ivon you would have “smothered it at birth”.
“Thursday, 26 February 2009 Sympathy for the Compassionate Conservative block quote Westminster mourns after Cameron’s loss
What the Financial Times describes as a “shocked Westminster” was yesterday united in expressing its sympathy with David and Samantha Cameron following the sudden death of their son, Ivan.
The six-year-old, who suffered from cerebral palsy and epilepsy, died in hospital on Wednesday morning.
The normal exchanges of prime minister’s questions were put on hold as Gordon Brown led the Commons in expressing sympathy.”I know that in an all too brief young life he brought joy to all those around him,” said Brown.”I know also that for all the days of his life he was surrounded by his family’s love.”Ann Treneman in the Times says the prime minister “managed to find exactly the right words and tone for this most unusual and sudden of Commons occasions”.
block quote end While my first instincts would be to smothered any such a child of mine at birth, I would also have realised that we live in the sort of Britain where it would profit me to look after it for the rest of its hopefully short life, in order to reap the “Man of the People, formerly a toff”, “sleeping on hospital floors, reading nursery rhymes to other less privileged children at all hours of the day”, “at ease with public services” kind of kudos he is now getting as a result of his 6 year “investment”, at the expense of the NHS.
I would still have smothered it at birth, though. Sorry.
I am hoping you will congratulate me for my honesty, but I know you will rail at me for my callousness.
Instead of praising me for my forbearance from imposing the needs of my hopeless hypothetical child on the NHS and at taxpayers’ expense for 6 whole years knowing it would die anyway without ever speaking or walking or in any way acknowledging my existence, you will condemn me for proposing infanticide.
This is the sort of Britain we live in. Posted by Claire Khaw at 10:30″. For the post please see http://thevoiceofreason-ann.blogspot.com/2009/02/sympathy-for-caring-compassionate.html#comments
Claire, you’ve stopped replying to my posts on your own blog. In the last one I asked you why you have to moderate all your blog comments before they you allow them to be published. Clearly, you are worried about your reputation and don’t like it when people say nasty things about you which surprises me as you seem to like to portray yourself as impervious to all insults and to be a great believer in the freedom to say what you like, when you like, no matter how deeply offensive it may be to others. Another example of your hypocrisy, methinks.
As for your last response on here – babies are human beings too and therefore should enjoy the same rights and protection under the law as everyone else, I’m staggered that you don’t recognise this! I don’t dispute the fact that if your parents want you dead then there’s not much that you, as a baby, can do about it, however that does not mean that we as a society should abandon our moral code, our ethics our laws, and allow parents to do what they like with their kids – I suppose you believe that what happened to Baby P was completely up to his parents and they should have been allowed to torture him for months before ending his short life because it’s none of our business do you? What about the woman who recently pled guilty to stabbing her three kids to death because she allegedly loved them too much and couldn’t bear to be parted from them? Just let her get on with it I suppose?
At what age do babies become human beings in your view Claire?
I have published all the comments I have received on my blog, so what are you on about?
The death of Baby P does not affect me. If he had grown up he would be very likely to be depraved and criminal.
The death of other people’s children is not our problem and does not affect us.
The mother who killed her children to deprive their father of them is not my problem either. It is his problem for marrying such a maniac and up to him what he chooses to do with her.
As a libertarian I do not want to interfere with the choices of other people, especially in areas where it does not harm me or my interests.
Claire, you most certainly neglected to publish my comment asking you why you insist on moderating your site, vetting all replies before publishing them.
And you have not answered the questions I put to you in my last post on here either, that’s presumably because you can’t. Your constant inability to answer a straight question makes most of the politicians on QT look positively forthright, open and honest by comaprison.
I have answered all your questions as best I can. I am sorry you do not like them, but they are the only ones I have.
I moderate my site because I get lots of spam comments.
In essence is the argument here that infanticide is currently morally repugnant when practised after birth? Infanticide is legal and morally acceptable when it is called abortion, so presumably it would be acceptable to advocate abortion for the disabled rather than infanticide?
Is there also an argument here about parental rights versus the right of the state? Certainly the idea that the state should practice infanticide is beyond belief, can you imagine if we had infanticide under someone like Blair, children would be slaughtered to fit all sorts of ‘quotas’ and ‘targets’!
I am not proposing state-implemented infanticide. In fact, I think that parents ought to have the power of life or death over their children, rather like the Roman paterfamilias.
As I understand it abortion is only allowed prior to the point at which a foetus would be able to sustain independent life outside the womb (I.E. once the point at which it could sustain independent existence is reached abortion is not permitted by law).
Bringing another human being into the world places a huge responsibility on the parents and (as previously stated) I find the idea that unwanted children can be disposed of (rather like one might throw away a consumer gadget one no longer wants) deeply disturbing. If people do not want babies there are a multiplicity of contraceptives availible to prevent pregnancy. In the unlikely event that birth control fails (and the child is carried to term) the parents have an obligation to raise it in a loving manner or if this is not possible (for example with a young teenage mother who lacks the personal capacity and/or family back-up to raise it) then there are plenty of people who are ready and willing to adopt a child.
Lots of people prepared to adopt a healthy child, but not a severely disabled one, Kevin.
Claire,
You are correct that most people, considering adoption would baulk at the idea of adopting a severely disabled child. However there are people prepared to do so and with appropriate support the number of willing families/individuals could be increased. Society’s attitude towards people with disabilities is far more humane than was the case even 50 years ago. This has happened by education together with people seeing disabled persons holding down jobs, paying taxes and making a contribution to society.
Claire,
You say that parents should have the right of life and death over their children and that other people’s children are no concern of anyone other than the parents in question. I think that John Done expresses the contrary opinion far better than I can
“No man is an iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the
lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved
in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee….”
Kevin, you forget there was once a time when parents did have power of life and death over their children.
Did the human race die out?
res ipsa loquitur.
The fact that particular things were once legal tells us nothing other than the self-evident fact that the law allowed them to happen. Yes infanticide was accepted in previous ages but so was the idea that women are the property of their husbands and that all their possessions belonged to their spouse. On this basis should we revert to the days when a lady could be ill treated (with impunity) and her property expropriated by her husband? Again should we revert to Victorian times when it was perfectly legal for a man to pay for sex with a 13-year-old prostitute? If we adopt the reasoning that something is acceptible because it happened (in the past) then we can justify the abuses I refer to above and many more in the name of tradition/history.
Re Kevin’s comment of March 15, 2011 at 1:51 pm, I will again say that I do not advocate the organised killing of the disabled. If they have parents prepared to bring them up, then they shall live. If they do not then it is no business of anyone else’s.
Re Kevin’s reply of March 15, 2011 at 2:21 pm:
My modest proposals are to:
1. abolish child benefit
2. repeal the Sex Discrimination Act
3. repeal the Equality Act
4. repeal the Disability Discrimination Act
As a point of fact the Disability Discrimination Act was replaced by the Equalities Act. Disability discrimination, racial discrimination and other forms of discrimination are now all encompassed by the Equalities Act.
Repeal them all!!!
But with fabian/environmentalist types calling for a ‘sustainable population’ does that not imply, if not a cull, then ‘selection’, a move away from an absolute right to life?
I don’t think that there is any prospect of any of the democratic political parties imposing state sanctioned eugenics on the population. In the West there is no problem of overpopulation (most families have a maximum of two children) hence I can’t see why a government (formed by one of the major democratic parties) would impose such measures. There are dangers from the extreme right (E.G. neo-Nazis) however these seem unlikely to be on the road to political office.
You have raised a number of questions but you haven’t (so far as I can see) indicated were you stand on the issues in question. I’d be interested to know your view? Kevin
There may not be an actual problem with overpopulation in the West but there is a perceived problem of people causing a problem for the environment. And when the politicians / elite perceive people to be a problem then we all need to be worried.
I think you are overfocusing on the “dangers from the extreme right” which as you admit “seem unlikely to be on the road to political office” which turns the issue into a rant against the BNP rather than a defence of the right to life.
I can’t see a government ever advocating killing the disabled – but then of course no one ever forsaw the nazis! but that is also my point, that a government that did bring it in might not be forseen, whereas I think we can all see what the BNP are like and vote accordingly.
Obviously the paterfamilias right of infantide would mean the right to kill the infant irrespective of whether it was disabled or not. And in some parts of the world children are killed for being female. The issue is then whether there should be such a right, but whether the child is disabled or not is irrelevant other than as a justification in some cases of infanticide. If we practice abortion then there would seem to be no justification for infanticide.
But then there are the pro-euthanasia fanatics. So while you’re worrying about the BNP those nice do-gooders will have made it easy for a government to justify releasing you from the pain of living…