Canada’s hellish euthanasia laws

 

For a language which to the English ear occasionally sounds guttural, German also contains a few words as musical as they are useful. Think of Doppelgänger or Schadenfreude. Words such as these tend to creep into the English language when we lack an equivalent to convey the meaning so succinctly expressed.

One such word with contemporary relevance is Entzauberung. This appeared in the works of Friedrich Schiller, the 18th century playwright, philosopher and poet, and was later borrowed by Max Weber, the 20th century sociologist often referred to as one of the most important theorists on the development of modern Western society.

Weber gave Entzauberung a modern meaning. It is commonly translated to English as “disenchantment” but he was referring to something much deeper and dynamic. To him, Entzauberung is the de-mystification of the sacred elements of society, the persistent and extensive rejection of the metaphysical and the spiritual aspects of both private and public life. It was a phenomenon he observed until his death in 1920 and which has accelerated over the succeeding century, perhaps most energetically in Sexual Revolution when the reproductive act effectively lost its meaning along with the purpose and truth of marriage and, most recently, in the erosion of the self-evident biological realities of the male and female sexes.

The final Entzauberung has yet to come but it is appearing in sight. This will be the loss or total rejection of the sacredness and inviolability of human life itself and it is manifesting itself most powerfully in the drive throughout the western world for the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide. 

Such practices don’t just appear from nowhere. They are not simply accepted and introduced into societies. Rather, they are preceded by a philosophical and theoretical basis to make them palatable. This is the Entzauberung now at full throttle in the UK, implicitly yet forcefully proposing that life has no intrinsic value and that death is an enlightened solution to any kind of suffering.  (more...)

Canada’s hellish euthanasia laws