Abuses and Usurpations

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

- Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence

This document is uniquely American, and indeed defines what it it to be an American.  Unlike Europe's sad history of tribal allegiance, best described as blut und boden (blood and soil), to be American is a mental act.  It is an act of faith, faith in a mental construct.  The Declaration defines that construct, and indeed acts as our secular credo.

But people skip most of it.  Dusty with history, they race past the bill of complaint against His late Majesty King George, to the stirring parts.  The exciting bits.  The ones where the prose transcends the mundane, and sings to the American soul.

But the Revolution was indeed a revolution, and blood was spilled.  People were killed, killed dead.  The Declaration explains - offers facts to a candid world - why the founders felt obligated to spill blut onto the boden.

I've wondered what it might take to make me feel willing to do this - to declare that I and my fellows are, and of Right ought to be, free of the political bands that connected us with the old order.  It might be something very like this:

The Belgians have ramped up their organ harvesting campaign from euthanasia cases in Applied Cardiopulmonary Pathophysiology (15: 38-48, 2011) to discuss the harvesting of lungs.  I reported on this before, but there is more to add.

Note that one of the four killed and harvested had a mental illness, described in the paper as self mutilation.

When I read this, my first thought was this cannot be true.  But the magic of blogosphere linkage led me to the source, an article by Dr. D. Van Raemdonck et al. in the journal Applied Cardiopulmonary Pathophysiology:

The highlighted line is the epitaph for a mentally ill woman who was killed by the Belgian Government for her organs.  Like an animal put to death so that her body parts could sustain some other creature, she was disturbed enough to hurt herself and so was condemned to death.  She was just about exactly my age.

And Belgium, that historical exemplar of humanity, sent doctors to dissect her.  All for the greater good of society, don't you know.

I look on this situation, and wonder if the outcome would have been different if her family had fought for her.  Quite frankly, I don't know.  What I do know is that some Belgian Doctor killed her Dead Right There, and cut her apart.  I know that he did this with the full moral and legal approval of the Belgian State.

I don't know whether that kind of thing would ever take root on these shores.  I certainly hope not, although we're constantly told by our Moral Betters™ that we need to be more like the Europeans.  We were told that ObamaCare wouldn't blow the budget, or force people into Medical Exchanges, or kill private medical insurance for a lot of folks.  Maybe the people who told us that didn't really know what they were talking about, and we're just ending up that way.

And so maybe the people who will say that this sort of atrocity could never, never, never, ever happen here actually know what they're talking about.  Maybe they're not just a bunch of Statist Pricks drunk on their ideology of control.  Maybe they are, as they tell us, nicer than we are.

But here's the sticking point for me:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Life.  My credo tells me that it's an unalienable right.  That means that any contract I might make that would terminate that is null and void, just like any contract I might make to sell myself into slavery is null and void.  Unenforceable, by the terms of our credo.

And so I watch with nauseated fascination as the Europeans once again tread on forbidden soil.  Blut-soaked boden, you might say, but that would describe the better part of that unhappy continent.  So much for Belgium, and for a Europe that would not look twice at this.

The mentally ill are terribly, terribly vulnerable.  That illness is a scourge on them, and on their families.  I can understand why some would be willing to take drastic measures to put an end to that scourge, even desperate measures.  But there's only one word that describes a State that would not just stand by and let that happen, but which would officially sanction it.

Evil.

And so I think on our land, and our credo.  What would it take for me to follow in the path of our Founders?  Because it is true what they said, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

This might do it for me.  I'm not a violent person - indeed, I see myself as a citizen who is (and of right ought to be) part of the social order.  This society deserves people like me to actively support it.

But if the Moral Exemplars™ who are convinced that we need to be more like Europe send Men With Guns to my house to take one of my family members away for vivisection, well then the social order is a little different.

Like I said, I don't know that things would come to this pass.  I don't know if the Men With Guns would show up to claim my family member's organs "for the Greater Good".  If they did, I don't know whether or not I'd do everything in my power to make sure they didn't go home that evening fully staffed.

What I do know is that my last thought as I lie dieing will not be that Men With Guns came for my family, and I didn't do everything I could to stop it.

I like Europe, and Europeans, but my ancestors all came to these shores because they made a choice to embrace that credo. 

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Amen.  I will not - ever - embrace this abuse.  This evil.

Postscript: While I don't think this is likely to come to pass on these shores, I'm not at all sure if this post would have resulted in Men With Guns coming to visit me, and taking my guns away - as this post demonstrates that I'm clearly "not suitable" to own guns.

Via Secondhand Smoke via Pseudo-Polymath.