Allah's Willing Executioners

Germany’s efforts to deport more illegal immigrants is hitting an operational and fiscal roadblock, as official figures show that voluntary departures are now outstripping state-executed deportations. Despite significant financial expenditure, almost 9,000 removal attempts failed in the first six months of the year alone.

The financial burden of these operations is highlighted by a number of incredibly expensive or aborted deportation operations. In May, a chartered flight from Leipzig to Pakistan carrying 33 individuals subject to departure — escorted by 75 federal police personnel — cost approximately €518,000.

The operation is now being referred to as “the most expensive group deportation flight in German history,” with funding provided by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex.

By contrast, German taxpayers directly absorbed the costs for two unassisted charter flights to Afghanistan in April and June, which each exceeded €300,000. Operations to various African nations, including Nigeria, regularly reached €400,000 per flight with Frontex support, while an additional €5.93 million went toward security personnel for repatriations.

In other words, even small-scale deportation efforts are leading to exploding costs. Deportation numbers are also now falling, according to government data released following a parliamentary inquiry by the Left Party. The report reveals that federal authorities executed 9,663 deportations between January and June, a decline of 18.2 percent compared to the same period in the previous year. During this same timeframe, nearly 9,000 planned deportations failed to occur.

While state-enforced deportations may be falling, more and more people appear to be willing to leave the country of their own volition. Border officials confirmed that 17,892 individuals required to leave the country departed on their own, with roughly 9,300 taking advantage of federal financial assistance to do so.

Despite these exits, Germany’s overall backlog remains huge, according to Welt newspaper. By mid-year, roughly 259,000 foreign nationals obliged to exit the country remained in Germany. Of this group, 77 percent were granted temporary suspension of deportation and slightly more than 60 percent represented individuals whose asylum applications had been formally rejected.

Even after cases were handed over to the German Federal Police, deportations were interrupted by administrative issues and even physical resistance. Out of 734 cancellations that occurred during this final phase, “130 were due to acts of resistance, and in 56 cases there were medical concerns.”

At the same time, many pilots appear to be refusing to transport migrants slated for deportation. Pilots refused passage to scheduled deportees in 280 instances during the first half of the year, a notable rise given that 514 total refusals were logged throughout the entirety of 2025. Official records do not track the specific reasons pilots refuse to conduct these repatriations.

To enforce compliance during transit, police utilized physical restraints in 786 cases, with such measures used “particularly frequently during repatriations to Algeria, Morocco and Nigeria.”

rmx

The education ministry of the German State of Baden-Württemberg has issued an emergency form to schools to help staff respond to possible cases of forced marriage or girls being held abroad against their will after the summer holidays.

In a press release dated July 31, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport stated that if pupils fail to return to lessons without explanation once the holidays end, this can in individual cases raise the suspicion of forced marriage or of being prevented from returning from abroad.

Baden-Württemberg’s summer holidays will last until September 12.

The ministry has provided schools with an emergency form titled “Forced marriage during the holidays – How can you, as someone not directly affected, help?” produced by the women’s rights organisation Terre des Femmes. The German weekly Junge Freiheit reported on the measure on August 24.

The document offers practical guidance for teachers on recognising warning signs and lists specialised advice centres that can assist.

The form is intended to enable schools to act quickly and in the interests of those at risk.

Forced marriage has been a criminal offence in Germany since 2011, under paragraph 237 of the criminal code, which took effect on July 1 that year.

The offence carries a prison sentence of between six months and five years. Lesser cases are punishable by a fine or up to three years.

Taking a person abroad by force, threat or deception in order to force a marriage, or preventing their return for that purpose, is also punishable.

The issue has been highlighted more widely by organisations working with victims.

On June 22, the women’s rights group Solidarity with Women in Distress (SOLWODI), based in Koblenz, western Germany, warned that the summer holiday period is a high-risk time for some girls and young women.

The organisation reported that its specialist advice centres supported 261 people nationwide in 2025 in connection with threatened or completed forced marriages, and a further 91 in cases of threatened or carried-out female genital mutilation (FGM/C).

The group said separately in March that almost 3,000 women approached its advice centres for the first time during 2025, across all the forms of violence it deals with.

“The summer holidays must not become the high season for human-rights violations against girls,” said SOLWODI chair Maria Decker.

She noted that many of those affected look forward to visits to relatives and are unaware that a marriage or genital mutilation may have been arranged.

Both practices remain criminal offences under German law even when carried out abroad against German nationals or residents living in Germany.

SOLWODI advised teachers, school social workers, medical staff, friends and relatives to remain alert to possible warning signs.

These can include strong anxiety about a planned trip abroad, last-minute travel to a family’s country of origin, increasing family control or remarks about an impending engagement or wedding.

Early contact with specialised counselling services is recommended when such concerns arise.

The Stuttgart counselling centre Yasemin recorded about 600 calls for help over the course of a year, according to Junge Freiheit.

Alongside the girls and young women affected, teachers, social workers and others who encounter suspected cases also contact the service.

Yasemin provides support for young women with a migration background who face the threat of forced marriage or other forms of violence carried out in the name of family honour.

Run by the Protestant welfare body Evangelische Gesellschaft Stuttgart and financed from State funds, the centre works with girls and young women aged 12 to 27. It also runs prevention sessions in schools from year seven upwards.

The Baden-Württemberg measure forms part of wider efforts by German authorities and civil society groups to address the risk that family holidays can be used as a cover for Heiratsverschleppung (marriage abduction), in which young people are taken abroad and then prevented from returning.

brusselssignal

With eight months to go until the French presidential election, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has achieved what many of his opponents seem incapable of doing: giving his campaign a genuine sense of momentum. The centre remains divided between the Macron-aligned candidatures of the two former prime ministers, Édouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal, the Right is struggling to establish its own narrative, and the non-Mélenchonist Left is still searching for a formula that would allow it to make its mark. 

Meanwhile, La France Insoumise (LFI), with its summer university in Châteauneuf-sur-Isère, has just staged a show of strength designed to convey a simple message: the momentum is on its side. More than 8,000 people were expected to attend—an unprecedented turnout for the movement—whilst Mélenchon, who officially announced his candidacy in May, brought the gathering to a close by declaring that “victory is possible.”

The strategy is now well known, but it could work once again. Mélenchon is seeking to present himself not as just another candidate on the Left, but as the only one capable of reaching the second round. The aim is to replicate—with some adaptations—the 2022 strategy: gradually convincing left-wing voters that tactical voting does not mean choosing their preferred candidate but the one who is mathematically most likely to survive the first round. However, unlike in 2022, Mélenchon now finds himself in a much more favourable environment for this approach. The Left is deeply divided, the Socialists and the Greens are unable to reach agreement, and the ‘Insoumis’ candidate benefits from a grassroots organisation that is operating at full capacity.

Voter surveys are beginning to reflect this dynamic. A poll published by Harris Interactive on Monday 24 August 2026 places Mélenchon in a position to qualify for the second round.

In three of the five scenarios tested, he comes second behind Marine Le Pen, securing 16–17% of the vote, compared with 35–38% for Le Pen. The increase is clear: Harris had him at 12% in April; he is now at 16–17%.

This increase must, of course, be put into perspective: we are still a long way from the election, and the margins of error make any overly precise interpretation of a few polling points illusory. Nevertheless, it remains politically significant because it comes at a time when rival candidates are struggling to generate comparable momentum. Between Édouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal, the only notable activity resembles an internal battle for leadership of the centre bloc rather than a genuine presidential campaign capable of galvanising the electorate.

For his part, Mélenchon is fine-tuning his narrative. He presents himself as the man of radical change but also as the one who could embody a comprehensive alternative to Marine Le Pen. During a meeting with his supporters, he emphasised environmentalism, economic transformation, and the need to break with current policies whilst promising to veto the Lecornu government’s next budget. He is beginning to cultivate his image as a candidate capable of exercising power, with a more presidential demeanour and a discourse seeking to move beyond LFI’s identity as merely a protest movement.

The entry of left-wing candidate Raphaël Glucksmann into the race poses a serious obstacle for Mélenchon. The co-chair of centre-left Place publique officially announced his candidacy on August 23, stating that he would take part in the primary organised jointly with the Socialist Party in the autumn and that he intended to rebuild a democratic Left without La France Insoumise. His 14% share of the vote in the 2024 European elections gives him an electoral credibility that few left-wing figures can claim. But he still lacks what Mélenchon has in abundance: a highly mobilised activist base and the ability to inspire passion. At this stage, Glucksmann appears more as a potential catalyst for the reorganisation of the centre-left than as the popular phenomenon capable of turning the tables.

Should we, then, take the risk of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s election seriously? At present, he is by no means a favourite. Mélenchon remains deeply unpopular amongst large sections of the French public, and even within the Left, there is considerable resistance to him: a recent survey highlights that a significant proportion of left-wing voters explicitly reject him, notably out of fear of what LFI represents in democratic and institutional terms.

But this is precisely where the danger lies. Mélenchon is an extraordinarily skilful, devious and chameleon-like politician, who knows better than almost any of his opponents how to alter his political image without necessarily changing his objective. The Mélenchon of 2027 may be less abrasive than that of 2022, more presidential, more patriotic, more environmentally conscious and more concerned with reassuring the business community and moderate voters. He knows full well that his main weakness is not his electoral base but his glass ceiling.

For the time being, Mélenchon’s entry into the race remains Marine Le Pen’s best guarantee of reaching the second round. A left divided between Mélenchon supporters, Social Democrats and Greens risks turning the election into a mechanical contest from which Mélenchon could emerge victorious on the Left without necessarily securing a national majority. But it would be unwise to take a Le Pen–Mélenchon run-off for granted or to assume that such a scenario would necessarily be unfavourable to the LFI candidate.

For there is one variable that the polls fail to capture accurately: the ability of the French media and cultural establishment to shift abruptly when an election enters its decisive phase. The candidate currently portrayed as the absolute pariah could, if circumstances demanded it, become the ‘republican camp’s’ candidate against the Rassemblement National (RN) tomorrow. Some of the elites who are fighting Mélenchon today might then come to see, by comparison with Marine Le Pen, the virtues of his so-called moderation.

europeanconservative

People have been saying for generations that travel broadens the mind. These days, it also regularly comes as a shock. That’s exactly what happened to me yesterday on my return flight from the ‘Weltwoche’ summer party in Zurich. Thanks to my frequent-flyer card (the ‘last generation’ will have to forgive me), I was standing in the priority queue for security at the airport, which was as long as the normal queues used to be. Suddenly there was such a commotion that I thought someone was being physically attacked or that a brawl was about to break out at the very least.
The incident took place two metres behind me: a man who, judging by his appearance – including his clothing and his large, veiled entourage – was immediately recognisable as ‘someone who hasn’t been living here for very long’, was engaged in a heated verbal exchange with an airport employee. He insisted on being ushered right to the front, along with his whole family, even bypassing the priority queue – which the brave Swiss man in uniform refused to allow.

The man reacted both loudly and hysterically, shouting something about being ‘handicapped’ – though there was no outward sign of any disability – and I was afraid he was about to go for the airport staff member’s throat. Everyone in the queue looked away and pretended not to see or hear anything, even though that must have been difficult if you weren’t visually or hearing impaired. I turned to the man in uniform, who already had beads of sweat on his forehead, and whose steadfastness impressed me – in Germany, such steadfastness would hardly be expected these days. “I’m happy to stand by you and can testify at any time that you were friendly and courteous,” I said to the man, who thanked me with relief.

Suddenly, the troublemaker started speaking in a different language and shouted at me in Swiss German with a distinct accent in such a way that I was afraid he was about to strike me. I was so shocked that I can’t remember the exact words anymore, only that I thought the whole thing was escalating. “It’s all just because I’m a Muslim,” he finally shouted. “No, it’s because you’re not behaving yourself,” I replied, thinking he was about to grab me by the throat. I turned away.

An elderly Swiss couple standing in front of me turned round and rolled their eyes – whilst everyone else acted as if to say, ‘Move on, there’s nothing to see here’. That alarmed me almost more than the man’s insolence. The Swiss woman whispered to me how appalled they were to have to experience something like this in their own country – and that it was no longer an exception. The couple took a little longer at security than I did. Later, I bumped into them again in the duty-free shop. There they told me that the testosterone-fuelled lout had also been aggressive towards the security staff and them, and when they told him to behave himself, he’d become even more aggressive – and the security staff had then told them – not him – off, saying they shouldn’t interfere.

And that is precisely why hardly anyone turns around anymore. Because, in line with Mao’s motto ‘Punish one, educate a hundred’, for years we have been forced to watch – for all the world to see – as people who stand up for themselves in such situations are publicly branded as racists, Nazis or ‘inciters’. The message has got through: anyone who intervenes risks being pilloried by society. Those who look the other way get off scot-free. The majority are as good as paralysed.
The elderly Swiss couple in the duty-free shop were resigned. They said they felt not only increasingly like strangers in their own country, but also as if they’d been silenced, muzzled. And that is precisely what is worst of all. Not the individual, brazen pusher. But the system that protects the pusher and disciplines those who have the moral courage to stand up.

reitschuster

by Bill Ponton 

I know that I can be oblivious to fashion trends until they surround me. Such was the case recently sitting on a beach when I noticed that every woman who walked by was covered with enough tattoos to earn her a spot in a carnival sideshow.  The same thing occurred when I watched this video. I had no idea how feminized Irish politics had become. I was under the impression that Irish culture retained some masculinity. I guess it changed over the course of time.

There is a lot to say about this video, but the most prominent feature is the vocal Nigerian woman minister telling everyone on the panel to get over it because she and her kind were here to stay. It was even more distasteful having an Irish woman sit next to her with a look of bovine stupidity on her face nodding in agreement. Ireland’s centuries-long struggle for independence is to be forfeited to sub-Saharan migrants because the black Irish diversity czar dictates it. I had to ask myself why car bombs weren’t going off in front of every government ministry.

I know the answer to my question. The Irish men, like their counterparts in the EU, UK, Canada, and a good chunk of the USA, have been emasculated. With woke women and eunuchs in charge, everyone else is along for the ride. One that includes inviting in and providing for everyone in the third world who can make their way to your shore.

Jean Raspail got it right in The Camp of the Saints (1973), a political allegory about mass migration, Western guilt, and the collapse of a society’s willingness to defend its own institutions and identity. Raspail’s argument is that a civilization can destroy itself when it ceases to believe that it has a legitimate right to preserve its borders, culture, and way of life. In Raspail’s telling, the decisive weakness comes from inside the culture rather than from the migrants themselves.

So, like the colorful tattoos that have sprouted up in our midst like an infestation of crab grass or lice, I guess that I should get used to further lectures from Nigerian ministers with odd-looking hairdos.

americanthinker

Illegal migrants are being handed huge discounts on Britain’s most beloved tourist attractions – while British families are made to pay full price.

A bombshell new report has unearthed 21 attractions which either offer free or heavily cut-price days out for asylum seekers.

These include London’s Kew Gardens, Bath’s Roman Baths, Canterbury Cathedral and more.

While buying one adult ticket for each venue would set a Briton back £337, a migrant would end up paying just £28, The Sun found.

Migrants use an Application Registration Card from the Home Office to unlock the door to renowned days out.

At Canterbury Cathedral, the card lets new arrivals gain free entry where an adult would have to fork out £18.50.

The same goes for the famous ancient baths, where migrants go free and locals can pay up to £33.

Kew Gardens, meanwhile, will open its doors to illegal migrants for 85p while most other visitors must pay £24.50.

Across the land, hard-working families also face entry costs to museums and theatres in cities like Bristol, Nottingham and Oxford where asylum seekers do not.

“This is yet more proof that we live in a two-tier society that prioritises illegal migrants over British citizens,” said Rob Bates of the Centre for Migration Control.

“The chance to enjoy a subsidised summer of fun is yet another reason why migrants are choosing to break into our country.

“These kinds of pull factors need to end if we want the boats to stop.

“Channel migrants enjoy free days out and perks, whilst the British taxpayer is forced to pay through the nose to access their own country’s cultural sites.”

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp added: “It is so unfair. Why should asylum seekers get freebies at the expense of the taxpayer?

“We must leave the ECHR so we can deport all illegal immigrants within a week of arrival.

“It is a shame the Labour Government is too weak to do this.”

It comes just months after GB News exposed how benefits claimants are also being offered discounted tickets to top attractions – but are snubbing them.

Within the last year alone, millions of pounds has been offered up in savings to those claiming on the state, GB News analysis has found.

More than 24.3 million people claim some combination of DWP handouts, but historic tourist attractions like the Tower of London only issued a few thousand discounted tickets.

Like Mr Bates, William Yarwood, the campaigns director at the Taxpayers’ Alliance, told GB News how this marked “yet another example of a growing two-tier Britain where those paying in increasingly feel they get less back than those drawing from the system”.

“Ministers need to put an end to these endless perks and discounts,” he added.

gbnews

The absurd has become an everyday occurrence.

Liberal-leftists in Europe (and around the world) are working non-stop to destroy their societies and implement frankly demented projects of pure dystopia.

Take Germany, for example, once home of the rigor and of the scientific method – now a safe haven for sexual deviants of all stripes.

The Telegraph reported:

“Julian Ferrat, the leader of the liberal Die Mannheimer (Citizens of Mannheim) party, has announced plans to throw a sex party at his local seat of government.

Mr. Ferrat said he hoped the party would help turn the southwestern city into a ‘swingers’ paradise’.”

So, there we have the insane German recipe: Shariah law plus bacchanalia.

And what’s a ‘paradise’ for Ferrat is the German families’ hell.

Earlier, Ferrat invited Germans to attend French swinger hotspot Cap d’Agde to ‘open their eyes’

“So far, 50 people have asked to attend, but first Mr Ferrat must secure a permit from the city council to turn the hall into a den of passion – a step that he admits will be quite difficult.”

“’At the moment, the focus is on determining which of the citizens who contacted me are seriously interested’, Mr. Ferrat, who has been nicknamed ‘Germany’s craziest councilor’, told The Telegraph. ‘Some of the 50 people who contacted me are part of the local swingers community, so they are ‘legit’. Some are people I don’t know yet … This week, I will start meeting the ‘unknown’ people in person’, the 35-year-old added.”

thegatewaypundit

In Leipzig, the security authorities are increasingly confronted with growing threats posed by the spread of large Syrian extended families. According to consistent media reports in *Bild*, *Junge Freiheit* and *Focus*, the Saxon State Criminal Police Office (LKA) is focusing in particular on the structures of four family clans. Together, they are said to comprise around 1,000 people. In one of the families, a significant proportion of the nuclear family is reported to have already come to the attention of the authorities for criminal offences.

The head of one of the families is attracting particular attention. According to the LKA, he is a patriarch who is said to have at least three wives, 32 children and at least 25 grandchildren. His family is also under scrutiny by the investigating authorities: almost two-thirds of the members of the nuclear family are said to have already come to the attention of the authorities for criminal offences – including traffic offences, drug trafficking, money laundering, people smuggling, threats, grievous bodily harm, robbery and benefit fraud.

However, according to the Saxon Ministry of the Interior, the scale of the phenomenon cannot by any means be reduced to a single extended family. The Ministry confirmed to German newspaper Bild: “The police have recorded approximately 130 individuals associated with the Syrian clan milieu in the Leipzig area as having a criminal record.”
The term ‘clan milieu’ describes a social environment in which family ties play a particularly significant role in the organisation of criminal structures. However, membership of an extended family does not automatically imply criminal involvement on the part of individual members. What is decisive are specific investigations and proven criminal offences. The focus of the security authorities’ work is therefore on individual families and individuals who are alleged to have repeatedly come to the attention of the criminal justice system.
The alleged misuse of state social benefits is a particularly serious matter. The head of the family, who has at least 32 children and whose identity the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) is withholding for data protection reasons, is in principle entitled to receive child benefit for his children, provided the relevant legal requirements are met. With 32 children, the child benefit amounts to just under 100,000 euros per year.

apollo-news

In a stunning display of radical left extremism, the influential German newspaper taz (Die Tageszeitung) has published a column that openly contemplates “forms of resistance – if necessary of a violent nature” against a potential AfD-led state government.

The piece, written by taz editor Jens Uthoff and published August 21, 2026 under the title “Antifaschismus und Militanz: Weckruf zur Wehrhaftigkeit” (“Antifascism and Militancy: A Wake-Up Call for Defensiveness”), comes as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) surges in polls ahead of the September 6 state election in Saxony-Anhalt.

Uthoff writes that executive power in a German state “could soon fall into the hands of the AfD.” Therefore, he declares, “it is imperative to deal with forms of resistance – if necessary of a violent nature.” He frames this as a defensive reaction to a supposed “right-radical coup attempt” rather than left-wing aggression, while carefully denying any “violence romanticism.”

Let’s be crystal clear: the AfD is currently polling between 40 and 43 percent in Saxony-Anhalt – far ahead of the establishment CDU. If voters hand the party a majority or a governing role in free, secret, and general elections, the left’s answer, according to this national newspaper, is to start discussing physical violence.

As the Ostdeutsche Allgemeine (and similar outlets) correctly noted the next day, this is not some fringe blogger ranting. This is a major left-wing editorial voice treating the possibility of citizens voting the “wrong” way as justification for contemplating violence against an elected government.

Political Violence Is Not a Metaphor

Political violence means beatings, attacks, kidnappings, and yes – murder. That is the historical reality of leftist “militancy” from the Spartacists of 1918–19 through the Red Army Faction and today’s Antifa street thugs. Uthoff’s carefully worded column pretends this is complex and defensive. In practice, it signals that the left will not accept a democratic outcome it dislikes.

This is not isolated. German authorities have already recorded a sharp rise in left-motivated violent crimes targeting AfD politicians, offices, and supporters – arson attacks on vehicles and party facilities, physical assaults, and constant intimidation. The AfD has become the primary party target of left-wing political violence.

Yet mainstream German media and the establishment parties continue their “firewall” against the only serious opposition to open borders, mass migration chaos, and the green energy disaster that is crushing German industry and households.

History Repeats: Left Violence Breeds Backlash

In 1918–19, German leftists rejected the democratic Weimar Republic and launched violent Spartacist uprisings aimed at imposing Soviet-style rule. They failed – and helped create the conditions for the Freikorps and the later militarization of politics. Uthoff and his allies appear determined to replay the same script: refuse to accept the will of the voters, then cry “fascism” when the backlash arrives.

The AfD’s program – secure borders, deportation of criminal foreigners, energy realism, and national sovereignty – operates fully within Germany’s constitutional order. No serious observer claims the party plans a “coup.” The only “coup” on the table is the left’s refusal to live with election results.

The New Program of the Left: Murdering the Opposition

For years, the Western left has insisted that “punching Nazis” is acceptable and that anyone to the right of the Greens is essentially Hitler. Now a major newspaper is casually discussing physical violence, ie murder, against a party that is simply winning free elections in eastern Germany. The same voices that scream about “threats to democracy” when the AfD rises are the ones contemplating extra-legal force against it.

Violence has no place in a civilized democracy. The proper response to a party you dislike is to defeat it at the ballot box – not to prepare terrorism and murder when voters reject your failed policies on immigration and the economy.

The German people in Saxony-Anhalt (and increasingly across the country) are voting AfD because the establishment has failed them. If the left’s answer is to talk about beating, attacking, and murdering, then the real threat to German democracy is not the AfD. It is the radical left that can no longer tolerate the people having a say.

thegatewaypundit

by Andrea Widburg

One of the problems with young atheists, who are often socialists and are invariably utilitarian, is that neither they nor their loved ones are near death. Yes, I know that sounds ghoulish and macabre, but the reality is that one of the greatest blessings of living in a country that still clings to its biblical foundations is that it values all life, not just life with some monetary worth to the state. We viscerally feel that as we and those around us age, something young socialists can’t even imagine.

I mention this because two things recently clarified this divide: A friend’s illness and a discussion with a young, utilitarian atheist.

First, my friend. This is an older woman with a genetic, debilitating, and ultimately fatal disease that’s akin to, but not the same as Parkinson’s (so new Parkinson’s treatments won’t work). In addition to her disease, my friend has made very poor life choices that have contributed to her body being completely unequipped to fight back against the disease’s ravages.

The combination of disease and self-created weakness meant that my friend caught a minor cold that quickly ended with her spending two days and nights in the ICU before settling in for a long stay at the hospital. By the time this whole treatment cycle is over, she’ll have spent three weeks in the hospital.

Second, my discussion with the young, utilitarian atheist. He says that a belief in God is just any other belief system, and is worried about the rise of “Christian Nationalism.” He believes that will mean a Handmaid’s Tale world, in which everyone is forced to be a Christian. He couldn’t grasp the idea that America was a foundationally Christian nation for two centuries without that happening.

More than his inability, thanks to modern education, to understand American history without a leftist filter, he also believes that the Western morality from which he admittedly benefits is possible without a Christian foundation. He thinks that murder will continue to be frowned upon if we live in a society in which each life isn’t valued because God created it.

His philosophy boils down to “practical morality” (aka “applied ethics” or “practical ethics”). The founding director of Harvard’s Ethics Center explained (or rather, bloviated about) it in a boring, complicated 1,200-word essay that boils down to this: “Practical ethics studies how people and institutions should make morally responsible decisions when abstract ethical principles collide with complicated real-world circumstances.”

In other words, what do you do if you have the power to control whether a train crashes into one baby or twelve nuns, and there are no other options? Ironically enough, I think that the nuns’ profound morality would say, “Save the baby,” while a utilitarian atheist would say none of them have inherent value and walk away, letting fate decide. (With “fate” also being a belief system, of course.)

In essence, for the young man, it all came down to the greater good. He’ll accept that a life has intrinsic value only if that value can exist without a cost to him. Once the costs start piling up, the accounting begins to weigh that life’s value against competing interests.

This atheist could not grasp that what he described was a straight line to the Nazi’s philosophy. Nazis had taken his ideas and run them all the way down to the bottom of the slippery slope. Because they disconnected from the biblical belief that each life has value, they gave the state the power to decide what lives matter—in other words, this was his anti-religious practical ethics in action, because some strong force in society must always make that utilitarian call.

And of course, as history shows, the Nazi state was able to assign value according to its needs: And it needed to get rid of the Jews, the homosexuals, the mentally ill or physically handicapped, the old and the very young who would not be able to contribute slave labor, etc.

The same thing is happening in Canada and across Europe. What started as a movement to shorten agonizing suffering in people on the verge of imminent death has become a way to save money for socialized healthcare systems. The practical morality is that the needs of the socialized healthcare system outweigh any individual’s claim to life.

Why pay to treat an old man who draws on retirement benefits rather than pays into them? He may claim that his prior payments entitle him to those benefits, but the state is hurting for cash, so he can go. And that cancer patient? Is it really worth treating her when there’s a substantial likelihood the cancer will return? And as Chelsea Clinton famously said a few years ago, abortion keeps women working, which really helps the economy.

In the UK, Stephen Hawking was worth saving because, while the fact of his aging meant he’d probably never again replicate the insights that made him famous, killing him would look bad. (In the field of mathematics and theoretical physics, it’s mostly the young ones—younger than 40—who have the insights.)

But thankfully, we’re still functioning on that old “individual life has value” system. That’s why societal pressure at both the legislative and economic levels means that my friend, despite her age, disease, and personal choices, is getting very good care.

My friend’s life has value—to her, to her husband, and to her friends. If she had children, they would value it, too. But the young man doesn’t see that because he doesn’t know and love her. To him, she’s just a valueless husk, sucking up resources that really should go to him, because, as a practical matter, he is the greater good. 

americanthinker