- The Iona Institute - https://ionainstitute.ie -

Stories that ought to shock liberals, but don’t

The stories we find most shocking are the ones that offend our deepest values. However, because it is liberals who dominate the public space, it is the stories which shock them, that get the most attention. Other, equally shocking stories get almost no attention, like this story [1] about the company that has turned embryos into a form of jewellery.

Yes, you read that correctly. A company in Australia has come up with an innovative (read grotesque) ‘solution’ to the problem of embryos left over by the IVF process. If you don’t want them frozen or destroyed, why not have them put in a pendant and then you can wear them close to your heart forever?

Another story that was, objectively speaking, shocking, was the revelation [2] that British hospitals are incinerating the bodies of aborted foetuses.

This story was a one-day wonder even in Britain where the news broke.

Similarly, the story [3] of Kermit Gosnell  and his abattoir of an abortion clinic in Philadelphia did not receive anything like the coverage it deserved even though Gosnell (now in prison) carried out abortions on babies at the point of delivery, in other words, infanticide.

Or what about the news [4] that no Down Syndrome babies have been born in Iceland for the last five years and countries like Denmark and Sweden aren’t far behind? This, too, caused almost no outrage.

The Dutch Health Minister recently announced [5] a national screening programme that will allow Down Syndrome babies to be detected in the womb must earlier than at present. When it was put to her that this might lead to the extinction of Down Syndrome children entirely, she basically shrugged her shoulders and said, “If freedom of choice results in a situation that nearly no children with Down syndrome are being born, society should accept that”. ‘Choice’ is such an absolute value, you see, that it justifies almost anything.

What we are doing to disabled children in the womb is, objectively speaking, appalling, a true scandal. Eugenics isn’t a strong enough word for it. ‘Genetic cleansing’ is better. (Just wait, some people will be more shocked at my use of this term, than at anything else they read in this blog).

Finally (for now) what about the news [6] that in the Netherlands an elderly, demented lady was held down by her family so that the doctor could inject her with a lethal substance? You’d have thought that would cause widespread outrage, but no. It barely got covered. (Oh, the doctor was cleared of any wrong-doing).

So, as you can see, there are lots of stories that really ought to cause outrage and scandal, but they don’t. This is because they don’t shock liberals as they ought to, and not the general public either because liberals, through their domination of the media and entertainment industries, pretty much decide what the general public get to hear and see.

This means we are only treated to stories that outrage liberal opinion and this has the effect of moving public opinion in one direction only. By rights, the public should know a lot more about the sort of stories I have listed above, but this won’t happen because these might move public opinion in the ‘wrong’ direction.

In a better world, it shouldn’t really matter what your ideology is, certain stories should appal us simply as human beings. Unfortunately, our various ideologies often prevent us becoming scandalised by what is actually, objectively speaking, scandalous. And that is a scandal.